A Curse and a Heartache
by A.V.A.OCTOBER
Summary: *Spoilers* Dr. Horrible suffers a reaccuring nightmare that constantly drags up old memories and rips open old wounds. He can't keep lying to himself. He's truly hurting.


A Curse and A Heartache

A lock of her muddy brown hair was curled around his calloused finger. When he released it, it was wisped back into place at the base of her pale, smooth neck. A wave of surrealism hit, and hit hard. Smirking, and somehow encouraged, he ran his fingers through again, brushing the strands behind her pierced ear. Her hair was smooth under his hand, and as it blew around under the gentle breeze, his nose was hit was the faint smell of cherry blossom shampoo.

She giggled. It was a pure, heartwarming sound. He tried with all of his might to burn that lovely noise into his memories, but, as it had a million times before, it instantly began to fade. "Billy," She laughed, her smile was radiant; her voice harmonious, like a song. On her cool breath was the sweet scent of frozen yogurt. He could still taste it's sweetness on his lips.

So this is love.

"Yes?" Billy murmured through an ever growing smirk. His heart fluttered erratically inside his chest, beating like the wings of a hummingbird. His hands felt light. His breath was cool. Again he was hit with a wave of surrealism, but he couldn't put his finger on why. His cares were fleeting. Again, his thoughts brought back to Penny.

The girl of his dreams.

She just smiled up at him. Took another step closer.

Humming softly, Billy moved his hand from the base of her neck and traced the contours of her collar bone blissfully. It was a feeling he had never experienced.

"Dr. Horrible," She called, something new in her usually light toned voice.

Billy gasped, thrown off by the use of his alias and looked into Penny's beautiful eyes.

But they were white. Pure white.

Dr. Horrible gasped again, more audibly, and jumped back as fear took a stone cold clutch on his once lively heart. "Penny!?" The sweet spring day that had previously surrounded them turned to a rolling thunderstorm. The wind ripped at their bodies, sending her hair around her face like a violent tornado.

Billy looked down at himself swiftly. Red. He was wearing red. The color of Penny's blood. A lab coat, but how did he get it? And since when was he wearing it?

_Wait a minute, when was she bleeding? Why am I seeing these images? A dream possibly? A vivid nightmare, coming to life before my eyes?_

Tears were streaming down from her soulless eyes. He noticed that the line he had traced just moments earlier slowly turned to ash and blew away in the gale, leaving a hole in his love's chest, revealing the dark, hollow chamber within. He took another step back, and swallowed hard.

"Penny?!" He asked again, reaching out reflectively for the person he loved, and caressing her cheek.

"Why?! Why, Billy, why?!" She sobbed, clutching onto his shirt desperately, with her talon-like black claws. "Why have you done this to me?!"

Where his hand now touched, her smooth porcelain cheek withered and slipped between his fingers. Dust. Again he could see straight through the large crater, into the hollow nothingness within.

"Penny! I – What are you – I – I would never hurt you!" He stuttered, his heart turning icy. What where these images flooding into his mind? He hadn't really hurt Penny? Had he?

"But you did! You did!" Penny cried, ripping violently at Billy's shirt. "Look!" She pulled a taloned hand away and grabbed at her chest in one swift movement.

The once roaring wind silenced. The petrifying, unfamiliar images flooding to the back of Billy's eyelids ceased. The only noise that reached his ears was the sound of his erratic, shallow breaths.

Penny's pale fingers were tinted a dark, sickening red, and there, jetting out of her chest was a large, shimmering hunk of metal. His breath caught. His thoughts just… Stopped. Slowly, mechanically, his gaze drifted back to her face. Thankfully, her beautiful eyes had returned to those large, dark brown doe-like orbs he fell in love with. The cracks and craters in her porcelain completion restored themselves, along with the pink tint just under her freckled cheekbones and nose.

But her gaze seemed to stare right through him.

He voice was monotone. All emotion was drained, sounding more like a robot than his Penny. "Captain Hammer will save us, Billy."

Dr. Horrible shot up in bed, sweating more than Moist on a midsummer day. His nails dug into his flesh where he was clutching ferociously at his bare chest. Trying to stop that pain, deep within him.

Horrible shut his eyes and inhaled deeply, tears swelling against the backs of his eyelids. Tuning in to the feel of his heart pounding against the inside of his palm, he tried to calm himself, but the tears crested.

_Penny_, he thought, hunched over his hands. Sometimes, if he looked hard enough, he'd still see her blood, staining his fingertips. _Penny, I'm so sorry_.

He had that dream almost every night, and almost every night, he'd wake and sit there, stare at his disgusting hands and remember. Or he get up. Stand on that chair and threaten to kick it out from underneath him.

There was no one there to stop him anyway. And there was no one in the world who'd give a damn if he did. At least not anymore, that's what he'd like to believe anyway. Believe that she cared.

But that night he just sat. And he'd sit for the entirety of the night, moved to silence, stilled with self-hatred, and try to cease that infernal shaking in his fingers.

And there'd be no one around to hear his pathetic sniffles and soft, quiet sobs.

That was his curse.


End file.
